Kenneth Goldsmith: Against Translation : Displacement is the New Translation

Against Translation is an unreleased essay by Kenneth Goldsmith. Jean Boîte Éditions publishes it here in eight languages, in eight books gathered in a boxcase - English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. The author discusses the impasses and shortcomings of translation, this "approximation of discourse that produces a new discourse" and he opposes the notion of displacement, a phenomenon born of globalization: if people and objects are moved, so it will for language. Using the example of the inffuence of advertising, information ow and the effects of networking, Kenneth Goldsmith shows the obsolescence of the act of translation and reflects on the idea of movement. Movement is the new reality which tends to impose its standard upsets linguistic structures, social and political worlds, and profoundly changes our cultural practices.